Scaramucci Does the Fandango

I have what I am sure will be an unpopular theory about Anthony Scaramucci, and it is this: that Anthony Scaramucci actually knows what he’s doing. And if I am right about this — and I very much believe that I am — it’s actually far more troubling than the already-troubling, more popular narrative that he’s a complete idiot who has no idea what he’s doing.

But before I let my counter-intuitive, contrarian, Bizarro-World-Scott-Adams freak flag fly, allow me to give some background for those who have not been watching the Scaramucci story unfold over the past week.

Last week it was announced that President Trump had hired ex-Goldman Sachs financier and Fox News host Anthony Scaramucci to be the White House Communications Director. It was an especially odd choice, even for an administration marked by odd choices; consequently it raised more than a few eyebrows. Odder still was that Scaramucci appeared to have been granted full Chief-of-Staff powers and responsibilities by the President, despite the fact that the White House had an actual Chief of Staff (Reince Priebus).

Scaramucci’s primary footprint on the world up until recently has been that of a poor man’s Tony Robbins, authoring books with titles such as Hopping Over the Rabbit Hole: How Entrepreneurs Turn Failure Into Success and Goodbye Gordon Gekko: How to Find Your Fortune Without Losing Your Soul. A few years ago, he used the assets of his investment firm, Sky Bridge Capital, to acquire the rights to the TV show Wall Street Week, a vanity project which allowed him to hire himself as its host. If there was a cliched caricature that readily fit Scaramucci over the years, it was probably Guy Who Really, Really Wants to Be Famous.

Prior to Trump’s inauguration, Scaramucci had been nominated to the low-level office of Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs — a position ostensibly charged with interfacing with lobbyists supportive of whoever is in the White House. That nomination was unceremoniously and quickly rescinded; by all accounts it was Priebus himself who scuttled the offer. Rumors for why Priebus might have done this range from worries that Scaramucci’s brash and tone-deaf style might alienate the President’s special interest allies, to concerns that Scaramucci was little more than an intellectual lightweight with really nice hair, to Scaramucci’s constant public insulting of candidate Trump right until the moment when it appeared Trump might win.

But as head-scratching as the idea of hiring of Scaramucci to essentially be White House Chief of Staff might have been, it’s nothing compared to the Scaramucci’s own actions over the past week since accepting the position, which have been nothing less than bizarre.

Immediately after Scaramucci’s hiring was announced, many reporters began noting that he had a long history of disparaging Donald Trump. On Fox, to take one example, he called Trump an “Anti-American” “hack,” dismissing him as “an inherited money dude from Queens County” who was so awful a candidate and human being that he was likely “a Democratic plant for Hilary Clinton.” While he could not do much about video records that Fox held the rights to, he could and did systematically delete his own tweets saying similar things about the Donald. When this deleting was reported, he quickly claimed he had not in fact deleted anything, apparently unaware that screen shots and archiving exist. Then, when faced with proof that he was deleting tweets, he shifted his narrative and claimed — bizarrely — that he was deleting them out of a sense of full transparency.

It got worse.

Politico reviewed Scaramucci’s financial disclosure form, and discovered that his sale of Sky Bridge Capital, necessary to work as a White House staffer, was structured in such a way that he would continue to be paid profits during his tenure as Communications Director. Scaramucci went on air and said that the disclosure form was leaked by an enemy within the White House, and that such a leak was a felony. In fact, his disclosure form was obtained by Politico from the Office of Government Ethics, and — like all other White House disclosure forms — is available to any US citizen who requests it. 1 Later, in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union, he alluded to a anonymous expert on Russian intelligence Donald Trump trusted, who Scaramucci said could not name — and then a minute later spilled the beans that the anonymous expert of Russia that Donald Trump trusted was in fact Donald Trump. He also spent the week announcing staffers firings on CNN and Fox, without ever bothering to inform the staffers he was firing on national television.

Then, with the weekend approaching, Scaramucci did two interviews with the press that made many wonder if the new White House Communications Director might be in waaaaay over his head.

The first was with the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, whom Scaramucci called out of the blue. Lizza has tweeted a background-sourced comment that Scaramucci, Trump, Sean Hannity, and former Fox News exec Bill Shine were having dinner. As anonymous sourced insights into power go, it was pretty damn tepid, a nothing-burger that would have been public record hours later anyway. Still, Scaramucci was incensed, and demanded Lizza give up his source, oddly threatening to fire the entire White House communications staff if Lizza didn’t confess that it was Priebus. Other personal highlights from that interview: Scaramucci called Priebus “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic” who was “cock-blocking” him,” explained that Steve Bannon “suck[s] his own cock,” claimed that the FBI and the DOJ were investigating his enemies to get dirt on them at his request, and, perhaps worst of all, apparently refers to himself in the third person as “the Mooch.”

That unscheduled interview was followed up by a 27-minute humdinger the next morning on CNN’s New Day with Chris Cuomo. Seemingly damage control over the then-published account of Lizza;s interview, Scaramucci called in to the show unprompted to set the record straight. He then went wildly back and forth between claiming that he and Priebus were brothers of the soul whose love knew no bounds, to insisting that Priebus was essentially a back-stabbing rat-fucker whose ruin would come by Scaramucci’s own hands. He claimed his “buddies” in the FBI were helping him scare the “knee knockers” in the White House that were out to get him. He seemed confused that Cuomo was not on his side, as they were both Italian-Americans.

I could go on, but I won’t. The truth about both interviews is that there is simply no way I can do them justice. To understand why so many people believe Scaramucci is either unfit for his office, mentally unhinged, shockingly paranoid, a narcissistic-personality-disorder-level pathological liar, or some combination of all of the above, you really need to read the whole New Yorker piece and watch the whole CNN interview. If you take the time to do both, you’ll see why people think these things about Anthony Scaramucci.

But here’s the thing: I don’t actually think he’s any of those things.

I think Anthony Scaramucci is really, really intuitive. Moreover, I think Anthony Scaramucci is the first White House staffer who truly understands the President as a person, who inwardly fully accepts and acknowledges Trump’s temperament rather than makes self-deceiving excuses for it, and who has figured out how to best harness both of those things for his own personal gain. And to be clear: if I’m right, it’s actually worse than if everyone else is.

To explain, let me start off by making a claim — one that seems obvious to me, but that I have not seen reported or speculated on by anyone else covering this story: When Anthony Scaramucci talks to the press or does television interviews, he isn’t really talking to the press or the television audience. He isn’t really talking to the American People. He’s really just talking directly to one person and one person only: President Donald J. Trump.

One of the assumptions made by everyone after Lizza published his New Yorker piece was that Scaramucci was such a neophyte that he didn’t understand that if one wants comments to be off the record one has to explicitly state that. Why else would have have said such things? This theory was buttressed by a Tweet from the WH Com Director lamenting, “I made a mistake trusting in a reporter. It won’t happen again.” But this morning the New Yorker clarified that Scaramucci had requested upfront that certain parts of his interview be off the record, and that the New Yorker honored that request. Scaramucci, in other words, had known at the time that what he was saying was going to be quoted, and, one had to assume, wanted to be quoted.

Why? Because he was telling Donald Trump both exactly what Donald Trump wanted to hear, and exactly what Anthony Scaramucci wanted Donald Trump to believe.

Listen to the CNN interview. Scaramucci says over and over again that his relationship with Trump isn’t a professional one and that he doesn’t think of Trump as a boss. He and Trump, Scaramucci says over and over for half an hour, are good friends. Great friends. The kind of friends who don’t care about what the other does or says, because they are just buddy-buddy friends, now and forever. It’s a creepy, bizarre, and entirely inappropriate thing for a White House staffer to say about most Presidents. But Donald Trump isn’t most Presidents. He’s known for having both a thin skin and a demand for unreturned, toadying loyalty from his underlings. And he’s incredibly credulous about it, which is why he bought hook, line, and sinker Scaramucci’s explanation for his trashing Trump, despite the fact that the timeline of said trashing clearly proves that explanation wrong. This also explains why Scaramucci goes off the deep end in both interviews with effusive praise for the President. Trump isn’t just a man of good judgement and temperament, but one of historical levels of those very qualities. Trump isn’t just smart, he may be the smartest person ever of all time.

There are, too, Scaramucci’s ever-repeating insistences that anyone in the White House who does not support Scaramucci is a secretly an enemy of Trump, working only to destroy the President and his legacy. In addition, there is the repeated claim by Scaramucci that when he is alone with the President, he isn’t being a yes-man to Trump but rather bravely telling Trump the Truth he needs to hear, damn the consequences. Which is an odd thing to keep saying unprompted in an interview where no one is asking what Scaramucci is saying to Trump in private, and where everything else Scaramucci is saying just so happen to agree with and/or flatter the President.

There is also this: If you google videos ofAnthony Scaramuccitalking on camera in years past, he has an extremely polished speaking style. It’s fluid, almost silky, underscoring his carefully cultivated Poor-Man’s-Tony-Robbins image. But when you listen to Scaramucci on the CNN interview, his speech had changed dramatically in almost every way. He has a different rhythm, a different vocabulary, a different way of emphasizing points. When I was first listening to the CNN piece, I wondered if he might be nervous. (I certainly would be, if I’d been quoted saying things like he had in the New Yorker.) But after a few minutes it hit me, and I realized that I actually did recognize this new rhythm, this stilted vocabulary, this oddly chaotic structure of response. Anthony Scaramucci didn’t sound different because he was nervous. He sounded different because he was mirroring exactly the speaking style of Donald Trump.

Anthony Scaramucci thinks he can control the White House by being a more efficient and effective toady than anyone else in the building. And he’s likely 100% correct.

After covering the campaign, I’ve made two points repeatedly to friends who ask what I think is going on in the White House on any given day. The first, initially universally denied but now universally accepted by the White House and the GOP, was that most of the anonymous “government officials” being quoted in the press would eventually be discovered to have been Trump-hired White House staffers, not old Obama hires in other agencies. This is because Trump, for whatever reasons, seems to value highly both toadying and backstabbing among his underlings even when it damages his brand, and richly rewards such behavior. The second point is that you really have to take all “leaked” comments from the White House with a large grain of salt, even if that leak tells you something damaging about Trump, Bannon, Spicer, or whoever that confirms your low opinion of them. Every leak might well be true; it might also just be a way of “leaking” something entirely fabricated in order to stick a knife in a rival and move up half a notch in the Trump-toadying hierarchy.

That someone like Anthony Scaramucci was going to come along and take advantage of this dysfunction wasn’t just possible; it was inevitable. And if I’m right, the attempts by career people like Priebus to be a steadying influence on White House policy are about to be tossed out like so much dirty bathwater, to be replaced by someone whose sole ambition, as best I can tell, is to personally enrich themselves at the expense of the country by encouraging the President of the United States to do the same.

Tod is a writer from the Pacific Northwest. He is also serves as Executive Producer and host of both the7 Deadly Sins Showat Portland's historic Mission Theatre and 7DS: Pants On Fire! at the White Eagle Hotel & Saloon. He is a regular inactive for Marie Claire International and the Daily Beast, and is currently writing a book on the sudden rise of exorcisms in the United States. Follow him on Twitter.

I have no particular knowledge of this guy. I was not consciously aware of him until a few days ago. But it has been obvious to me for a while that someone with no pretense of governance–good or bad–and willing to go all in on the sycophancy could do well in this administration.

The saving grace of this administration and Republicans in congress is the incompetence. Their intent is evil, but they are too inept to implement their intent. We just watched Congress spin its wheels for six months trying and failing to pass a health care bill–any health care bill at all–despite this having been their signature issue for the past seven years. In all that time they never gave any thought to the matter of what they would pass, given the opportunity. Furthermore, their other signature issue of tax cuts for rich people was predicated on their gutting health care first and paying for the tax cuts with the savings. This has been their signature issue since the Reagan administration, and yet they screwed it up. I expect that they will manage to lower taxes for rich people some way or the other, but really, now.

Of course this approach to governance has the downside of putting nuclear weapons in the hands of petulant incompetents. There is non-trivial risk here. In hope that the Pentagon has implemented some highly unofficial procedure to prevent us from nuking Paris in a fit of Trumpian pique. This also relates to my assessment that Trump is unlikely to be removed from office via impeachment, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the 25th Amendment activated.Report

I just want to point out: Skinny repeal only came close to passing because Ryan promised them the House wouldn’t vote on it. And the bill that passed the House only passed because Ryan assured enough people that the Senate wouldn’t pass that bill.

Both chambers are kicking the can to each other, and it’s only the promise of “Someone else will make it better, this vote bill won’t become law” that gets them close to (or at) a simple majority!

That’s how screwed the GOP is on this issue. They have no consensus internally. They’re not even close.

I suspect tax cuts are going to be worse without that Health Care money to play around with — they’re either going to have to adopt 10 year sunsets, or they’re going to have to look at really popular deductions. I’d put money down on them going with sunsets, because I don’t think they have any workable consensus on a neutral plan that’ll pass reconciliation.Report

Of course, Ryan’s promise was largely worthless. Under House rules, any member can make a motion to concur and have it voted on. Ryan might claim to have his caucus under sufficient control to keep such a motion from passing, but unexpected things can happen.

Long ago, when I was in some sort of high school thing visiting the state capital in Nebraska, one of the members of the unicameral there was espousing the virtues of a single chamber: “You take every piece of every bill very seriously, because there’s no other chamber to fix your mistakes.”

Morat20: I suspect tax cuts are going to be worse without that Health Care money to play around with — they’re either going to have to adopt 10 year sunsets, or they’re going to have to look at really popular deductions

Or they’re going to ignore other buget / deficit control rules and pretend they aren’t doing just that.Report

They can’t pass it under reconciliation unless it’s neutral over ten years. That’s why they were pushing the healthcare stuff that much — they needed that 800 billion in wiggle room so they could make upper bracket and business cuts permanent.

They’ll end up sunsetting their cuts, for the same reason Dubya’s did. They can’t find enough spending cuts or deductions to kill without pissing off too many people.Report

But what if McConnell and Ryan just Thelma & Louise it and throw out all the budget and reconciliation rules, making everything a simple majority?

(My understanding, at least with the filibuster, was it paradoxically requires only a simple majority to nuke it – or maybe not a paradox, as that’s why it’s called a nuclear option, simple, straightforward and utterly destructive. Anyway, I don’t know if that applies to other procedural rules.)Report

There isn’t a 50 vote GOP majority to throw out those rules in the Senate. It’s as simple as that. The Senators may be Republicans but some of they are going to vote to preserve their own power first and foremost and McConnell can only lose 3.Report

No, they can’t pass it under reconciliation if it increases the deficit beyond a ten-year limit (more precisely, it can’t increase the deficit beyond the period specified in the budget resolution, which has been as long as ten years in the past; conceivably the resolution could specify a period longer than ten years). That’s why the Bush tax cuts expired after ten years. Greatly increased the deficit for ten years, which was okay, and then reverted to current law to get rid of the effect in the out years.Report

I think I’m confusing the reconciliation rules and the stance of the Freedom Caucus on the tax cuts. I think they not only want budget neutral, they want it to be revenue neutral (or better yet, less revenue) as a requirement.Report

Understandable. The original intent of the Budget Act was that reconciliation would be used to either reduce the deficit or increase the surplus. (Also to force the President to spend appropriated dollars, which created the dilemma Obama faced at one point*.) But the authors didn’t spell that out. Having been there at the state level, I’m sure that staff pointed out to them at some point that sh*t was screwed up :^)

* That is, statute sets tax rates that generate $X in revenue, statute requires that $Y be spent, and statute says that even though $Y>$X, no additional borrowing is allowed. All executive actions violate the law in one way or another.Report

In other news, my side again confirmed my belief that snark is the balm of the powerless and has limited rhetorical value. Their is a meme on the net comparing Saramucci to the Boneititis guy from Futurama. Boneitis guy was a parody of a Wall Street bro from the 80s, complete with Banker’s collar and suspenders.

How many people really watch Futurama to consider this a wicked burn that would destroy the guy?Report

On the other hand, who cares? It’s a frickin joke on the internet. It doesn’t have, or need, to have any more meaning then a joke. All sorts of groups joke within themselves about stuff. Yeah the this will “destroy, annihilate, obliterate, take apart at the sub atomic level” lines are stupid. But that is a BSDI thing and i can’t see how it means anything. If it means anything it’s that humor helps people with stress. That seems pretty non-controversial and a good thing.Report

The second point is that you really have to take all “leaked” comments from the White House with a large grain of salt, even if that leak tells you something damaging about Trump, Bannon, Spicer, or whoever. Every leak might well be true; it might also just be a way of “leaking” something entirely fabricated in order to stick a knife in a rival and move up half a notch in the Trump-toadying hierarchy.

The rumor that I heard was that The Mooch caught Priebus in a Canary Trap.

If you’re going to leak to the press to get a leg up or get inside the news cycle it’s one thing, if you’re going to leak to the press in such a way that hampers The Don’s ability to defeat his enemies, see them driven before him, and to hear the lamentations of the women it’s quite another.

The thing to worry about is whether The Mooch will help The Don achieve what is Best In Life to a greater degree than Priebus did.Report

As someone who has seen Trump as a Jacksonian figure, I’ve been waiting to see if his “Martin Van Buren” emerges. I don’t know much about Scaramucci, but could he be the person who understands Trump’s needs and creates shape and form to an administration adrift?

(For those unfamiliar with the reference, early in the Jackson administration, there was a social media scandal involving a cabinet member’s inappropriate marriage that echoed accusations made against Jackson’s late wife. Jackson demanded his cabinet show Mrs. Eaton respect and threatened to dual some, but it was only Van Buren who proceeded to make social calls on the young couple. Van Buren provided obsequious attention to Jackson’s sense of honor and loyalty, and was rewarded with the influence to create policy, dismiss most of the cabinet, and initate the spoils system)Report

Later, in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union, he alluded to a anonymous expert on Russian intelligence who he said could not name — and then a minute later spilled the beans that that expert was Donald Trump.

If you’ve actually watched this, it’s a particularly funny situation.

If I recall correctly, Scaramucci claims something, the guy he is talking to disbelieves it, Scaramucci cites this ‘anonymous expert’, the guy still doesn’t believe it, and Scaramucci is like ‘Oh yeah?! What if I told you the expert was President Trump’.

Which immediately brings two thoughts to the mind of everyone: a) You sound like you’re lying dude. You sound exactly like you just made up that expert, and then decided to claim it was Trump. Followed shortly by b) Wait, you think attributing statements to President Trump means we’re more likely to believe them? Where have you been?

And then, of course, most of us didn’t notice the absolute nonsense of c) The guy hired by Donald Trump to push his own policy is claiming that policy is justified because of things Donald Trump wants everyone to know, but not to know it came from him? What sort of logic is that?Report

While I agree completely with this post, I think it’s worth mentioning something that didn’t get mentioned here, although it has been mentioned plenty of other places:

Scaramucci is the guy that Donald Trump wishes he was.

Scaramucci is so charismatic that he has a very successful history of running what are basically long cons on people, but entirely legal ones that don’t get him in trouble.

For example, his most recent one was selling ‘funds of hedge funds’, where he allow wealthy but not super-rich people invest in hedge funds, which normally won’t do business with you unless you are very very very rich.

How is that a con? Well, mostly because hedge funds are cons to start with…they perform slightly under the market average if you consider fees. (The reason that hedge funds even exist at all is that they used to be a tax scam for clients, but that was closed a decade ago.) If you really really know what you are doing, you can perhaps pick a good one, but it’s basically a crap shoot.

So, all doing a fund of fund…means he gets to skim off another layer of fees, and also means that it’s extremely unlikely to hit the jackpot. Almost anyone who invested with him in his SkyBridge thing, at any point, would have been better off buying index funds. (Barring the few times that hedge funds and market temporarily desynced, which they do in both directions randomly. I mean, I’m sure there were a few investment points where he managed to beat that market.)

And yet…he kept managing to sell those idiots things.

Scaramucci is actually the guy that Donald Trump, deep down, believes himself to be, the super-rich guy who wheels and deals with the moderately rich and manages to make large amounts of money from them.Report

Another disconcerting piece of evidence that lends credencr to your theory–there’s a clip going round Facebook showing The Mooch doing exact imitations of Big Tweet’s hand gestures when he speaks. I somehow doubt that Mooch is doing so subconsciously, which means he spent some amount of time studying Tweet’s mannerisms and practicing them until he got them down pat. Creepy but brilliant.

The Mooch must also know something about malignant narcissism to know how to play the sychophant so well, massaging Big Tweet’s ego and playing yes man to his insecurities and paranoia. How long this act will keep him safe if he keeps upstaging Tweet is open to debate, but for now his loyal doormat yet staunch defender act is pure gold. And funny as hell. In these dark days, I’ll take a laugh anywhere I can get one.Report

He wanted Priebus out but didn’t want his hands dirty. He brought in Mooch who chased out Priebus and dominated headlines for a week. Then he brings in Kelly who chases out Mooch, meaning Trump doesn’t actually have to deal with Mooch. And Trump was largely in the background throughout.Report

In all seriousness, it wouldn’t totally shock me to learn that this was more or less Trump’s plan/hope. I don’t think he’s the brilliant puppeteer that some still argue he is. But I also would venture to guess this particular form of manipulation is in his toolbox and probably something he has had to use at times. I don’t think it is going to work with real politicians and world leaders, but when it comes to pulling things over on the Mooches of the world, I’m sure Trump is rather skilled.Report

It’s never 12D chess. Trump replaced Preibus with Kelly, who said he wouldn’t work with Mooch. So Mooch got kicked to the curb, most likely because he was already stealing Trump’s thunder.

It’s a comedy of errors, not some masterminded plot. Unless the plot is “Speedrun Watergate and trash everyone involved’s reputation”. So unless Trump’s big reveal is that he’s the new host of Punk’d and this has been an 18 month long marketing campaign, it’s not 12D chess. It’s not clever politics.

It’s a rudderless, back-biting, circular firesquad mess where people come and go based on whatever person whispered in Trump’s ear last.

Although we can probably surmise that General > Real Estate Guy in Trump’s mental Rolodex. He does like the generals and the military — remember him wanting some nice tanks on parade for his inauguration?

I’m waiting for him to try to stick some medal on himself and evolve into his final, 3rd world military dictator, form.Report

Trump is not playing 12D chess. Trump does not understand the rules of chess, or that anyone else is playing chess, or how the little horsies move, or literally anything about the game of politics^Wchess at all.

It is, however, possible, that Trump is playing 12D Balderdash and cleverly got himself bad press by hiring someone really crappy to blow things up so he wouldn’t have to.

He wanted Priebus out but didn’t want his hands dirty. He brought in Mooch who chased out Priebus and dominated headlines for a week. Then he brings in Kelly who chases out Mooch, meaning Trump doesn’t actually have to deal with Mooch. And Trump was largely in the background throughout.

Do you think he did that because he didn’t want to have to fire Priebus, or because he didn’t want to be blamed for firing Priebus? Weirdly, there is current precedent for both those:

He’s openly trying to get Session to quit without firing him, so clearly has problems moving forward in that. (OTOH, there’s a theory he’s just doing that to torture Session, which is possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. I mean, Jeff Sessions getting the AG spot and being allowed to do all the retrograde racist dogwhistle tough-on-crime shit he’s been trying to do all his life, and having to put up with being tormented by public mockery from his boss during it, is such a fitting punishment it is entirely possible that Jeff Sessions died last year and we’re all extras in his own personal hell where he gets exactly what he wants and it’s absolutely horrible. So I can’t complain too much there.)

And, on the third hand, he is deeply, deeply, deeply stupid. So it is plausible that he literally decided ‘I will hire the public asshole who operates with no discipline’ and ‘I will hire a military man to impose discipline’ at the same time, and didn’t notice the problem there.

That third option seems the most plausible, but, remember, under Trump’s Razor, we have to find the stupidest possible reasons for something. It can’t just be ‘No one thought that through’, we have to operate on the assumption they did think it through and did something brain-bleedingly stupid.

So I’m voting for: Trump was, indeed, attempting to deflect blame for Priebus’ firing onto Scaramucci. This attempted deflection failed so badly that literally no one even noticed that was what he trying to do.

Huh. Thinking about it, it is entirely possible it failed because, duh, they lost Spicer to give out that message! I mean, it wouldn’t have worked anyway, but they lost the ability to give out their dumbass message of how “President Trump did not want Priebus gone, Scaramucci forced it.” that no one would have believed, but Fox and Friends could have dutifully repeated how everyone understood how it was due to Scaramucci.Report

Yeah I feel for the comedians but the rest of the media establishment are happier than pigs in mud.

I made two assertions in the run up to 2016: that Trump would never be elected and if any GOP candidate were to be elected Trump would be the least harmful from a Liberal PoV. I was astonishingly wrong about the former but the latter one is holding up tolerably well.

Though knowing my luck as soon as I hit Post Comment Trump is going to launch a nuke a North Korea.Report

Trump generates enough clickthroughs himself to keep them all in mud for his entire term. The Mooch was just the shrimp on the mud cocktail. Sure they don’t get the shrimp but they still get the rest of the cocktail.Report

North, Yeah, I kinda pity all the libs that want Trump fired into outer space. He’s doing good, honestly. He’s doing nothing, really. I don’t mind that. He’s doing better than Hillary would’ve — and when he’s out, the libs can “roll back” some of his immigration stuff (the only thing he appears to be actually trying at, even if he’s more incompetent than Obama at deporting folks).Report

Then, when faced with proof that he was deleting tweets, he shifted his narrative and claimed — bizarrely — that he was deleting them out of a sense of full transparency.

That did indeed sound bizarre, so I clicked through to the actual tweet, and…that’s not at all what he said. The “full transparency” referred to the acknowledgement that he was deleting old tweets, not the motivation for deleting the tweets. His stated reason for deleting the tweets was, “Past views evolved & shouldn’t be a distraction.”

Now, you can argue that it’s not really “full transparency” if he only admitted it because someone proved that he was lying when he previously claimed not to be deleting them, but he definitely didn’t say that he was deleting tweets for the sake of transparency.Report

Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may resume services subject to the following conditions, which apply to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, interfaith centers, and any other space, including rented space, where religious or faith gatherings are held: 1. Indoor religious gatherings are limited to no more than ten people. 2. Outdoor religious gatherings of up to 250 people are allowed. Outdoor services may be held on any outdoor space the religious institution owns, rents, or reserves for use. 3. All attendees at either indoor or outdoor services must maintain appropriate social distancing of six feet and wear face masks or facial coverings at all times. 4. There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service. 5. Collection plates or receptacles may not be passed to or between attendees. 6. There should be no hand shaking or other physical contact between congregants before, during, or after religious services. Attendees shall not congregate with other attendees on the property where religious services are being held before or after services. Family members or those who live in the same household or who attend a service together in the same vehicle may be closer than six feet apart but shall remain at least six feet apart from any other persons or family groups. 7. Singing is permitted, but not recommended. If singing takes place, only the choir or religious leaders may sing. Any person singing without a mask or facial covering must maintain a 12-foot distance from other persons, including religious leaders, other singers, or the congregation. 8. Outdoor or drive-in services may be conducted with attendees remaining in their vehicles. If utilizing parking lots for either holding for religious services or for parking for services held elsewhere on the premises, religious institutions shall ensure there is adequate parking available. 9. All high touch areas, (including benches, chairs, etc.) must be cleaned and decontaminated after every service. 10. Religious institutions are encouraged to follow the guidelines issued by Governor Hogan.

“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the order says in a section delineating norms and restrictions on religious services.

The consumption of the consecrated species at Mass, at least by the celebrant, is an integral part of the Eucharistic rite. Rules prohibiting even the celebrating priest from receiving the Eucharist would ban the licit celebration of Mass by any priest.

CNA asked the Howard County public affairs office to comment on how the rule aligns with First Amendment religious freedom and free exercise rights.

Howard County spokesman Scott Peterson told CNA in a statement that "Howard County has not fully implemented Phase 1 of Reopening. We continue to do an incremental rollout based on health and safety guidelines, analysis of data and metrics specific to Howard County and in consultation with our local Health Department."

"With this said," Peterson added, "we continue to get stakeholder feedback in order to fully reopen to Phase 1."

The executive order also limits attendance at indoor worship spaces to 10 people or fewer, limits outdoor services to 250 socially-distanced people wearing masks, forbids the passing of collection plates, and bans handshakes and physical contact between worshippers.

In contrast to the 10-person limit for churches, establishments listed in the order that do not host religious services are permitted to operate at 50% capacity.

In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, there were hopes that the disease could be treated with a compound called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is a long-established inexpensive medicine that is widely used to treat malaria. It also has uses for treating rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. There had been some indications that HCQ could treat SARS virus infections by attacking the spike proteins that coronaviruses use to latch onto cells and inject their genetic material. Initial small-scale studies of the drug on COVID-19 patients indicated some positive effect (in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin). President Trump, in March, promoted HCQ as a game-changer and is apparently taking it as a prophylaxis after potentially being exposed by White House staff.

Initial claims of the efficacy of this therapy were a perfect illustration of why we base decisions on scientific studies and not anecdotes. By late March, Twitter was filled with stories of "my cousin's mother's former roommate was on death's door and took this therapy and miraculously recovered". But such stories, even assuming they are true, mean nothing. With COVID-19, we know that seriously ill people reach an inflection point where they either recover or die. If they died while taking the HCQ regimen, we don't hear from them because...they died. And if they recover without taking it, we don't hear from them because...they didn't take it. Our simian brains have evolved to think that correlation is causation. But it isn't. If I sacrificed a goat in every COVID-19 patient's room, some of them would recover just by chance. That doesn't mean we should start a massive holocaust of caprines.

However, even putting aside anecdotes, there were good reasons to believe the HCQ regimen might work. And given the seriousness of this disease and the desperation of those trying to save lives, it's understandable that doctors began using it for critically ill patients and scientists began researching its efficacy.

Why Trump became fixated on it is equally understandable. Trump has been looking for a quick fix to this crisis since Day One. Denial failed. Closing off (some) travel to China failed. A vaccine is months if not years away. So HCQ offered him what he wanted -- a way to fix this problem without the hard work, tough choices and sacrifice of stay-at-home orders, masks, isolation and quarantine. So eager were they to adopt the quick fix, the Administration made plans to distribute millions of doses of this unproven drug in lieu of taking more concrete steps to address the crisis.[efn_note]Although the claim that Trump stands to profit off HCQ sales does not appear to hold much water.[/efn_note]

This is also why certain fringe corners of the internet became fixated on it. There has arisen a subset of the COVID Truthers that I'm calling HCQ Truthers: people who believe that HCQ isn't just something that may save some lives but is, in fact, a miracle cure that it's only being held back so that...well, take your pick. So that Democrats can wreck the economy. So that Bill Gates can inject us with tracking devices. So that we can clear off the Social Security rolls. And this isn't just a US phenomenon nor is it all about Trump. Overseas friends tell me that COVID trutherism in general and HCQ trutherism in particular have arisen all over the Western World.

It's no accident that the HCQ Truthers seem to share a great deal of headspace with the anti-Vaxxers. It fills the same needs

In both cases, the idea was started by flawed studies. The initial studies out of China and France that indicated HCQ worked were heavily criticized for methodological errors (although note that neither claimed it was a miracle cure). Since then, larger studies have shown no effect.

HCQ trutherism offers an explanation for tragedy beyond the random cruelty of nature. Just as anti-vaxxers don't want to believe that sometimes autism just happens, HCQ Truthers don't want to believe that sometimes nature just releases awful epidemics on us. It's more comforting, in some ways, to think that bad happenings are all part of a plan by shadowy forces.

There is, however, another crazy side that doesn't get as much attention because their crazy is a bit more subtle. These are the people who have decided that, since Trump is touting the HCQ treatment, it must not work. It can not work. It can not be allowed to work. There is an undisguised glee when studies show that HCQ does not work and a willingness to blame HCQ shortages on Trump and only Trump.[efn_note]Not to mention the odd fish tank cleaner poisoning that has nothing to do with him.[/efn_note]

In between the two camps are everyone else: scientists, doctors and ordinary folk who just want to know whether this thing works or not, politics and conspiracy theories be damned. Well, last week, we got a big indication that it does not. A massive study out of the Lancet concluded that the HCQ regimen has no measurable positive effect. In fact, death rates were higher for those who took the regimen, likely due to heart arrhythmias induced by the drug.

So is the debate over? Can we move on from HCQ? Not quite.

First of all, the study is a retrospective study, looking backward at nearly 100,000 cases over the last four months. That's a massive sample that allows one to correct for potential confounding factors. But it's not a double-blind trial, so there may be certain biases that can not be avoided. In response to the publication, a group doing a controlled study unblinded some of their data (that is, they let an independent group look up who was getting the actual HCQ and who was getting a placebo). It did not show enough of a safety concern to warrant ending the study.

It's also worth noting that because this is an unproven therapy, it is usually being used on only the sickest patients (the odd President of the United States aside). It's possible earlier use of the drug, when the body is not already at war with itself, could help.

With those caveats in mind, however, this study at least makes it clear that HCQ is not the miracle cure some fringe corners of the internet are pretending it is. And it should make doctors hesitant in giving to people who already have heart issues.

As you can imagine, this has only fed the twin camps of derangement. The truther arguments tend to fall into the usual holes that truther theories do:

"How can this be a four-month study when we only learned about COVID in January!" The HCQ protocol started being used almost immediately because of previous research on coronaviruses.

"How come all of the sudden this safe medicine that people use all the time is dangerous?!" The side effects of HCQ have been well known for years and have always required consideration and management. They may be showing up more strongly here because it is being given to patients whose bodies are already under extreme stress. Also, azithromycin may amplify some of those side effects.

"They just hate Trump." Not everything is about Donald Trump. If it turned out that kissing Donald Trump's giant orange backside cured COVID, scientists would be the first ones telling people to line up and use chapstick.

The other camp's response has ranged from undisguised glee -- that is, joy at the idea that we won't be saving lives cheaply -- to bizarre claims that Trump should be charged with crimes for touting this unproven therapy.

(A perfect illustration of the dementia: former FDA Head Scott Gottlieb -- who has been a Godsend for objective analysis during the pandemic -- tweeted out the results of the RECOVERY unblinding yesterday morning and noted that it showed no increased safety risk. He was immediately dogpiled by one side insisting he was trying to conceal the miracle cure of HCQ and the other insisting he is a Trumpist doing the Orange Man's dirty work.)

In the end, the lunatics do not matter. Whether HCQ works or not, whether it is used or not, will be mostly determined by doctors and will mostly be based on the evidence we have in front of us. If HCQ fails -- and it's not looking good -- my only response will be massive disappointment. Had HCQ worked, it would have been a gift from the heavens. It is a well-known, well-studied drug that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk. Had it worked, we could have saved thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of long-term injuries and saved trillions of dollars. That it doesn't appear to work -- certainly not miraculously -- is not entirely unexpected but is also a tragedy.

{C1} The Christian Science Monitor looks at 1918 and how sports handled that pandemic, and the role it played in giving rise to college football.

"That's really what started the big boom of college football in the 1920s," said Jeremy Swick, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. "People were ready. They were back from war. They wanted to play football again. There weren't as many restrictions about going out. You could enroll back in school pretty easily. You see a great level of talent come back into the atmosphere. There's new money. It started to get to the roar of the Roaring '20s and that's when you see the stadiums arm race. Who can build the biggest and baddest stadium?"

{C2} During times of rapid change, social science is supposed to be able to help lead the way or at least decipher what is going on. Or maybe not...

But while Willer, Van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some humility. This paper—currently published online in draft format and seeding avid debates on social media—argues that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an “evidence readiness” framework to help people determine when the field will be.

{C3} There is a related story about AI - which is predisposed towards tracking slow change over time - is having trouble keeping up.

{C4} The Covid-19 does not bode well for higher education is not news. They may have a lot of difficulty opening up (and maybe shouldn't). An added wrinkle is kids taking a gap year, which is potentially a problem because those most able to pay may be least likely to attend.

{C5} People who can see the faults with abstinence only education fail to see how that logic (We shouldn't give guidance to people doing things we would rather they not do in the first place). Emily Oster argues that the extreme message of public health advocates to Just Stay Home is counterproductive.

When people are advised that one very difficult behavior is safe, and (implicitly or not) that everything else is risky, they may crack under the pressure, or throw up their hands. That is, if people think all activities (other than staying home) are equally risky, they figure they might as well do those that are more fun. If taking a walk at a six-foot distance from a friend puts me at very high risk, why not just have that friend and a bunch of others over for a barbecue? It’s more fun. This is an exaggeration, of course, but different activities carry very different risks, and conscientious civic leaders should actively help people choose among them.

{C6} A look at what canceling the football season will do to the little guys - non-power schools. Ironically, they may sustain less damage due to fewer financial obligations relying on the money that won't be coming in. Be that as it may, Fordham has disestablished its baseball program.

{C7} Bans on evictions and rental spikes could have the main effect of simply pushing out small investors, rather than protecting renters. In a more good-faith economy this would be less of an issue because landlords would work with tenants. Which some are, though I don't have too much faith about it being widespread.

{C8} Three cheers for Nick Saban. Football coaches are cultural leaders of a sort. One is about to become a senator in Alabama, even. What they do matters.

The American college experience for better or for worse revolves around the residency factor. We have turned college into a relatively safe place for young adults to the test the limits of freedom without suffering too many consequences. Better to miss a day of classes because you drank too much than to miss a day of an apprenticeship or job and get fired. College was cut short this semester because of COVID and colleges are freaking out about whether they can open up dorms in the fall. The dorms are big money makers and it is hard to justify huge tuition bucks for zoom lectures even for elite universities. Maybe especially for them. California State University announced that Fall 2020 is going to be largely online. My undergrad alma mater sent out an e-mail blast announcing their plan to reopen in the fall with "mostly" in person classes. The President admitted that the plan was a work in progress but it strikes me as a combination of common sense and extreme wishful thinking. The plan may include:

1. Staggered drop-off days to limit density as we return.

This sounds reasonable but only in a temporary way because eventually everyone will be back on campus, living in dorm rooms together, needing to use communal bathrooms and showers.

2. Students would be tested for COVID-19 on campus at least twice in the first 14 days.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as the testing is available. Our capacity for testing so far in this country has not been great.

3. Anyone experiencing symptoms would be tested immediately. Students who test positive would be cared for in a separate dormitory area where food would be brought to the room and where the student could still access classes remotely.

Nothing wrong here. Outbreaks of certain diseases are not unknown in the college setting. During my senior year, there was an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of gastroenteritis. Other universities have experienced meningitis outbreaks.

4. All students would take their temperature and report symptoms daily.

This one is also reasonable but is going to involve spying on students and coming up with a punishment mechanism. How will they make sure students are not lying?

5. We would also require that socializing be kept to a minimum in the beginning, with proper PPE (masks) and social distancing. As time went on, we would seek to open up more, and students could socialize and eat together in small groups.

I have no idea how they tend for this to happen and it sets of all my lawyer bells for carefully crafted language that attempts to answer a concern or question but also admits "we got nothing." Maybe today's students are more somber and sincere but you are going to have around 500 eighteen year olds who are away from their parents for the first time and another 1500 nineteen to twenty-one year olds who had their semester rudely interrupted and might now be reunited with boyfriends and girlfriends. Are they going to assign eating times for the dining hall and put up solo eating cubicles that get wiped down and disinfected after each use? Assign times to use laundry facilities in each dorm? Cancel the clubs? Cancel performances by the theatre, dance, and music departments?

I am sympathetic to my alma I love it but and realize that a lot of colleges and universities would take a real hit financially without residency. This includes universities with reasonable to very large endowments. Only the ones with hedge fund size endowments would not suffer but the last part of the plain sounds not fully thought out yet even if my college's current President admitted: "Life on campus will not look the same as it did pre-pandemic" The only way i see number 5 working is if requiring is read as "requiring."

Seems that the theory that Covid-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people has very shaky evidence in support of it. Turns out the case this assumption was made from was based on a single woman who infected 4 others. Researchers talked to the 4 patients, and they all said the patient 0 did not appear ill, but they could not speak to patient 0 at the time.

So they finally got to talk to her, and she said she was feeling ill, but powered through with the aid of modern pharmaceuticals.

Ten Second News

Today we couldn’t be happier to announce that Vox Media and New York Media are merging to create the leading independent modern media company. Our combined business will be called Vox Media and will serve hundreds of millions of audience members wherever they prefer to enjoy our work.

In a nation in turmoil, it's nice to have even a small bit of good news:

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

In a five-way primary, Mr. King was defeated by Randy Feenstra, a state senator, who had the backing of mainstream state and national Republicans who found Mr. King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The defeat was most likely the final political blow to one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

King, you may remember, was stripped of his committee assignments last year when he defended white supremacism. Two years ago, he almost lost his Congressional seat in the general. That is, a seat that Republicans have held since 1986, usually win by double digits and a district Trump carried by a whopping 27 points almost came within a point or two of voting in a Democrat. That's how repulsive King had gotten.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Enjoy retirement, Congressman. Oops. Sorry. In January, it will be former Congressman.

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From the Daily Mail: Deadliest city in America plans to disband its entire police force and fire 270 cops to deal with budget crunch

The deadliest city in America is disbanding its entire police force and firing 270 cops in an effort to deal with a massive budget crunch.

...

The police union says the force, which will not be unionized, is simply a union-busting move that is meant to get out of contracts with current employees. Any city officers that are hired to the county force will lose the benefits they had on the unionized force.

Oak Park police say they are investigating “suspicious circumstances” after two attorneys — including one who served as a hearing officer in several high-profile Chicago police misconduct cases — were found dead in their home in the western suburb Monday night.

Officers were called about 7:30 p.m. for a well-being check inside a home in the 500 block of Fair Oaks Avenue, near Chicago Avenue, and found the couple dead inside, Oak Park spokesman David Powers said in an emailed statement. Authorities later identified them as Thomas E. Johnson, 69, and Leslie Ann Jones, 67, husband and wife attorneys who worked in Chicago.

The preliminary report from an independent autopsy ordered by George Floyd's family says the 46 year old man's death was "caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain".

The independent examiners found that weight on the back, handcuffs and positioning were contributory factors because they impaired the ability of Floyd's diaphragm to function, according to the report.

Dr. Michael Baden and the University of Michigan Medical School's director of autopsy and forensic services, Dr. Allecia Wilson, handled the examination, according to family attorney Ben Crump.

Baden, who was New York's medical examiner in 1978 and 1979, had previously performed independent autopsies on Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in Staten Island, New York, in 2014 and Michael Brown, who was shot by officers in Ferguson, Missouri, that same year.

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Oddly, the video was dropped by an attorney friend the men, because he thought it would exonerate them. He assumed when people saw Aubrey turn and try to defend himself, everyone would see what they did: a dangerous animal needing to be put down.